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Allan Savory is the founder of Holistic Management (HM), a systems-thinking, adaptive management approach to grazing livestock that is based on goal-setting and careful monitoring, and is often characterized by native rangelands and high-intensity, short-duration rotational grazing. Authors citing his work discuss diverse subjects and perceive his work very differently - he is clearly a polarizing figure. We use a scientometric approach to examine the impact Savory has had on scholarship by performing a detailed analysis on 337 records citing Savory from 1980-2015 found in Web of Science. Scientometrics is a practice aimed at measuring scientific influence. We examine patterns on spatio-temporal scales, subject matter using a custom classification scheme, and perceptions of HM, as well as research tendencies using bibliometric network visualizations. Savory's work has different meanings to different disciplines, often being cited as an example of more general 'adaptive management practices' by a wide range of fields outside the grazing community. Over time environmental and social science articles gradually increased in number among those citing Savory, while production and agriculture remained fairly stable after a peak in 1986-1990. Authors discussing Savory in the context of HM, as opposed to citing Savory for his general adaptive management principles, increasingly make a positive assessment of the practice over time. This occurs in conjunction with a similar increase over time in environmentally-inclined agriculture and social sciences records, which are those most likely to have a positive outlook on HM (unlike production-focussed agriculture, which is more likely to have a neutral or negative outlook). Maps of similarity in reference lists show polarization between management/social sciences and agriculture (i.e. they cite different work), while production, environmental and natural science papers are spread throughout the citation network suggesting more diverse citation patterns.